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The eleventh of thirteen children, Lee was born in Rugao county, Kiangsu province, in China, and fled to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War in the late 1940s. His father, who was traveling separately from the rest of the family, perished when the passenger ship Taiping sank on 27 January 1949.[1] Growing up fatherless, Lee never aspired to attend university; instead, he went on to graduate in 1960 from the Central Police College[2] with a degree in Police Science. (Central Police College is a "service academy" in Taiwan, and it is tuition-free, with a living stipend provided.) Lee then began his work with the Taipei Police Department, where he rose to the rank of captain at age 22, the youngest in Taiwanese history.[3] He later emigrated to the U.S. with his wife in 1965.[4]

Lee is currently the director of Forensic Research and Training Center at the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science and Distinguished Chair Professor in Forensic Science at the University of New Haven. Lee was the Chief Emeritus for the Connecticut State Police during 2000 to 2010 and was the Commissioner of Public Safety for the State of Connecticut during 1998 to 2000 and has served as that state’s Chief Criminalist and Director of State Police Forensic laboratory from 1978 to 2000.

Lee has lectured widely, written hundreds of articles published in professional journals, and authored or co-authored more than 40 books on forensic science, crime scene investigation and crime scene reconstruction. He has acted as an advisor or consultant to many law enforcement agencies. He hosted a show on the truTV network, formerly Court TV, titled Trace Evidence: The Case Files of Dr. Henry Lee, which highlighted his work on well-known cases. Lee has also appeared widely on television. He has been a guest on various Chinese TV and online programs, such as KangXi Lai Le in Taiwan, and multiple joining in Voice (Chinese: 开讲啦; pinyin: KāiJiǎng La)[5] and Beyond the Edge (Chinese: 挑战不可能; pinyin: Tiǎozhàn BùKěnéng)[6] in China Central Television in Mainland China.

He also was consulted on the 1991 death of investigative journalist Danny Casolaro, who died in a West Virginia motel room. Initially, Lee said the evidence presented to him by police was not inconsistent with suicide. A few years later when additional evidence from the hotel scene was revealed to him, Lee formally withdrew his earlier conclusion and stated: "a reconstruction is only as good as the information supplied by the police.”[8]

Lee was consulted as a blood spatter analyst during the trial of Michael Peterson, a fiction writer and politician from North Carolina who, in 2003, was convicted of the murder of his wife, Kathleen Peterson.

In 2008, Lee was involved in the early stages of investigation for the missing Orlando toddler, Caylee Anthony.[9]

In May 2007, Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler, the judge in the Phil Spector murder trial, said that he had concluded "Lee hid or destroyed" a piece of evidence from the scene of actress Lana Clarkson's shooting. Lee denied the allegation, and "when he testified before Fidler, Lee said he was astonished and insulted by claims by two former members of Spector's defense team that he had collected a small white object that was never turned over to prosecutors, as the law requires."[10] University of Southern California law professor Jean Rosenbluth said that Judge Fidler's ruling was "very narrow" and noted that the judge had made no finding that Lee had lied on the stand or acted maliciously.[10]